Keto diet was just starting to be popularised when I decided to embark on a weight loss exercise, which in turn made me a healthier and more active person. It also helped me to lose 19 kg, down to my lowest number on the weight scale since I was in my mid-20s.
But jumping on a completely new diet wasn’t easy for a true blue Italian like me, used to consume loads of pasta and pizza.
Therefore I activated the creative side of my brain, bought some shredded mozzarella cheese and baked it in the oven. I tried 15 minutes, then 20, alas I found the sweet spot at 18 minutes sharp.
The roundly shaped crispy chip that came out was incredibly good. I became so obsessed with such snacks that every day I would bring a bunch of them to work.
I bought a nice round container to hold the 8 mozzarella chips that my oven could bake in one go. Soon after at the office, the team started asking me what snack I was crunchin on, and I shared my chips with the team.
They totally loved them. So more and more frequently they asked me to produce more and encouraged me to sell them... an idea that at the beginning was good for a laugh, but after a couple of weeks became a serious opportunity at the back of my mind. I quickly made some calculations: 8 round chips maximised the space available in my oven, that was a physical limitation.
So I weighed the mozzarella and found out that each chip was made out of 7.5 to 8 grammes of cheese. I then calculated how much it cost me to buy the mozzarella from the supermarket half a kg at the time.
Then I went to source containers that could hold 8 chips stacked on top of each other made of solid material to protect the integrity and the fragrance.
Furthermore I found some plastic envelopes that were approved for postal shipment and checked out the price to ship out a box of chips within Singapore.
Lastly I rounded my electric bill if I were to use the oven for 3 to 4 hours a day. I quickly calculated the total cost and added a 50 per cent profit on top of that. I was in business.
This is how my journey started in creating an online shop in 2019, that however came to an abrupt end just 22 days later.
In the next few articles I will share what went wrong and what lessons I have learned while succeeding at launching and then failing at maintaining an online business.
As for this first part of the article I would say that the main lesson I have learned — and which I frankly managed to do quite well — was the importance of calculating the cost of production down to the cents.
However, what I failed to understand was that my oven was too small and sooner than I expected it could not handle the amount of incoming orders.
So whatever business you are planning to launch online, make sure that you have enough supply and capacity to make your clients happy. Nothing disappoints clients more than the inability to deliver what they have bought.
(The author is a member of the International Press Association)
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